TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (2) TMI 1298
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....eedings for Assessment Year 2017-18. 2. The challenge proceeds on the basis of the reassessment action having being accorded sanction by an authority clearly not recognised by Section 151 of Income Tax Act, 1961 ["Act"] as it stood at the relevant time. That provision as was applicable on the date of issuance of the Section 148A(d) notice read as follows:- "151. Specified authority for the purposes of section 148 and section 148A shall be,- (i) Principal Commissioner or Principal Director or Commissioner or Director, if three years or less than three years have elapsed from the end of the relevant assessment year; (ii) Principal Chief Commissioner or Principal Director General or where there is no Principal Chi....
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....nbsp; xxxx 33. A plain reading of section 3 establishes that where the time limit for the completion or compliance of any action under a specified Act were to fall between March 20, 2020 to December 31, 2020, the period for completion and compliance would stand extended up to March 31, 2021 or such other date thereafter as may be specified by the Union Government by way of a notification. Undisputedly, the date of March 31, 2021 came to be extended thereafter up to April 30, 2021 and lastly up to June 30, 2021. 34. Concededly, the Finance Act, 2021 was enacted thereafter and came into effect from April 1, 2021. It is admitted by the respondents that the terminal point for initiation of reassessment f....
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....which would have otherwise descended upon the authority to act and take action under the specified statutes. It was essentially concerned with tiding over the insurmountable hurdles which arose due to the pandemic and the disruption that followed in its wake. The Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, viewed in that light, was neither aimed at nor designed or intended to confer a new jurisdiction or authority upon an officer under a specified enactment. On a fundamental plane, it was a remedial measure aimed at overcoming a position of irretrievable and irreversible consequences which were likely to befall during the nationwide lockdown. It was principally aimed at enabling authorities to take and comm....
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....essment action were initiated, as per the extended Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act timelines, and thus after the period of four years, section 151 incorporated adequate measures to deal with such a contingency and in unambiguous terms identified the authority which was to be moved for the purposes of sanction and approval. Section 151 distributed the powers of approval amongst a set of specified authorities based upon the lapse of time between the end of the relevant assessment year and the date when reassessment was proposed. Thus even if the reassessment was proposed to be initiated with the aid of the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act after the expiry....
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....t would amount to us virtually ignoring the date when reassessment is proposed to be initiated and the same being indelibly tied to the end of the relevant assessment year. Once it is conceded that the notice came to be issued four or three years after the end of the relevant assessment year, the approval granted by the Joint Commissioner of Income-tax would not be compliant with the scheme of section 151. We thus find ourselves unable to sustain the grant of approval by the Joint Commissioner of Income-tax. 41. It is pertinent to note that the respondents had feebly sought to urge that the use of the expression "sanction" in section 3 of the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act also merits d....